Just got my deck and found I was having a problem with a with a Steelseries Laser Mouse.

Turns out the mouse adds a another keyboard under Keyboards in device manager. that will cause the computer to freeze up after awhile.
If I go to device manager I will have two keyboards under Keyboards and one mouse under mouse.
Deck could not help so I called Steelseries and they confirmed what is happening because for whatever reason its suppose to do that. I did not have a problem with the old G15 keyboard but did notice the two keyboards under Keyboards but it never caused a problem.

Steelseries says their Optical mouse does not do that so they are replacing mine with the Optical.


Just curious if anyone has a problem with some other Laser mice? if not what mouse are you using.

Interesting, 100 or so views of my post but no one uses a mouse. Helpful group.

I haven't used any laser mice but I have used several different optical mice (mostly Logitech, some Dell, some Microsoft), all USB, with both the 105 and 82 key Deck products and have not seen anything like you mention.

Also if Steelseries replied to you and claimed that the device is supposed to behave like this, then their engineering dept. is probably not designing products according to current industry standards and their devices should not be expected to behave normally - on their own or with other products.

UPDATE 12/17/2008: Correction on the two crossed-out sentences above, did not know there were macro keys for this mouse (cmon I don't work at SteelSeries, I work at Deck!); mouse should show up as both a mouse and keyboard under device manager.


Maybe nobody uses a laser mouse? Personally I have never used one, the optical versions have always been satisfactory in both resolution and price in comparison to laser.

I currently use a Logitech G9 Laser Mouse with my Legend and I don't have the lockup problems you are describing.

I have used several different laser mice with my Legend, in fact, with no such problems.

As an update from my last post I realized that I do use a Logitech laser mouse at home with my Deck and have experienced no problems.

I would bet it has something to do with the way it is showing up as a keyboard in device manager - if they followed industry standards it would correctly show up as a pointing device and not a keyboard and would probably work as expected. Would be curious to know if you ever got the optical replacement and if it works with your Deck without freezing.

I also use a Logitech laser mouse (still on my MX1000) and I've never had this problem (with either of my 82-key Decks).

First I have to say that I don't own a Deck Keyboard but most likely I will buy a 82-Key in the future.

I don't have this problem with the Ikari Laser, neither at home (SteelSeries 7G, Razer Tarantula) nor at work (some basic Dell Keyboard).
The Ikari Laser is detected by the OS as Mouse and Keyboard because it has macros (saved on the onboard memory) but doesn't have a dedicated driver and only uses the basic Windows Driver.
That's because not at every LAN-Event (Pro-Gaming) it's allowed to install drivers. I don't know if there is a other way to use macros without a specific driver.

That problem has nothing to do with the Ikari Laser being a Laser Mouse (Ikari Optical doesn't have macros), Windows doesn't even know if a Laser or Optical mouse is plugged in.
In fact there isn't a real difference between Laser and Optical mouse besides that Laser mice use a Laser-Diode (VCSEL) to illuminate the surface instead of a LED, the sensor itself is pretty much the same. Although the sensors of the Ikari Optical and Laser are from different manufactures and work quite different (different IAS).

Maybe I find the time to discuss this issue with the SteelSeries R&D Manager.

The more I think about this problem, the more I think it may be a USB power problem.

How do you have your keyboard and mouse plugged in? If it goes through a USB hub that is bus-powered (i.e. doesn't have a power brick) the two devices combined may be drawing too much power, and in turn your computer is turning off the USB ports. Deck Legend boards draw a max of 498mA and bus-powered USB ports/hubs have a max of 500mA so you can see two devices (including a Deck) in one bus-powered port/hub do not play very well.

Let us know your setup and if you find out anything from SteelSeries. I don't think it would have anything to do with laser vs. optical, or anything to do with the way it shows up in device manager. My money is on a power issue.

I got the optical from steelcase and it works just fine. The mouse and keyboard are plugged in usb,s off of the motherboard. There is just one keyboard listed under device manager now opposed to two with the Laser.

Thanks for the replies.